1. Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the following description relate to a user input device, and more particularly, to a touch panel used in a user input device and an electronic device including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A touch panel is one example of a kind of user input device used to determine whether a user generates an input and the position of the user's input by sensing the user's contact thereon. A user may input data or signals to a touch panel by contacting or pressing a surface of the touch panel with a finger, a stylus pen or the like. The touch panel can be used as a touch pad included as a substitute for a mouse in a laptop computer, a netbook and the like, or used in place of an input switch of an electronic device. Also, the touch panel may be used in association with a display. A touch panel which is mounted on the screen of a display device, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), a plasma display panel (PDP), cathode ray tube (CRT) and the like, is generally called a “touch screen”. A touch panel may be integrated with a display device to configure the screen of the display device or may be attached additionally on the screen of the display device.
In certain situations, a touch panel may be substituted for a user input device such as a keyboard, trackball or mouse, and also may allow for simple manipulations. Moreover, the touch panel can provide users with various types of buttons according to the types of applications to be executed or stages of the executed application. Accordingly, a touch panel, and more specifically, a touch screen, has been used as an input device for electronic equipment, such as a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a portable multimedia player (PMP), a digital camera, a portable games, a Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-3 (MP3) player, etc., as well as an automated teller machine (ATM), an information trader, a ticket vending machine, etc.
A touch panel can be classified into a resistive type, a capacitive type, a saw type, an infrared type, etc., according to methods of sensing user's inputs. With recent active studies into a user interface using multi-touch, a capacitive type touch panel allowing multi-touch recognition has attracted a large amount of attention. The capacitive type touch panel detects the occurrence of contact by sensing the amount of charge passing through a finger, etc. contacting the touch panel.
Since the capacitive type touch panel can sense even a slight contact, implementation of dragging is easy, but incorrect inputs may often occur. Further, the capacitive type touch panel fails to offer users a sense of input, that is, a feeling of recognition that a user gets upon inputting. In order to overcome this disadvantage, a method of installing a vibration motor below a touch panel has been proposed. The method offers users a sense of input by vibrating the whole touch panel using the vibration motor when contact is sensed.